Hi there,I'm having some massive issues with Windows 7 at current. Unfortunately today, for some unknown reason a message appeared on the screen whilst I was messing about with the latest Virtual PC Beta.You may be the victim of software counterfeitingTo use all Microsoft Windows features, such as allupdates from Windows Update; get the latest updates;and recieve product support, your copy of MicrosoftWindows must be validated as genuine.Now of course this is garbage, I'm a Microsoft partner and certainly don't apply cracks and wot not to any Microsoft software. After visiting the suggested link it informs me that Genuine Advantage does not support Windows 7, hence why it has failed.So I must ask this following question, WTF?Is it possible that Office 2007 has installed Genuine Advantage or it has been installed automatically during a Windows Update. This has screwed me up to be honest as I seem to have extremely limited TCP/IP functionality also and can't get on with the things I wanted to.Any ideas on how I can get around this issue??Thanks a million in advance.Nick.

Have you activated Windows 7? Type in Activate in the Search Programs and files box to begin the activation process.Carey Frisch

Have you activated Windows 7? Type in Activate in the Search Programs and files box to begin the activation process. Carey Frisch Hi there,If I do as you suggest, for some odd reason it launches Virtual PC Beta and starts trying to run my only configured VM.?? Maybe this is the problem?Nick.

Right I tried again but this time I waited a few seconds to see what would appear and this time I got a few more options. So i've run the Windows Activation, I get an error,A problem occurred when Windows tried to activate. Error Code 0x80072F8F"A security Error Occured"Which is quite helpful of Windows. Anyways, I googled the error code, and found the following KB articlehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/929458So then I noticed that the date was 2007! eh?? fixed the date, and tried activation again, this time it worked.Now why on earth is the local date/time effecting activation? Is this for people without any internet access? Possibly a little too restrictive imo and surely it would run better if it detected net access, then used an NTP server if available, otherwise fallback to local time. Anyways...Thanks a million, it's all working again now.Nick.

The date is needed for many reasons. In this case I'd suspect that it kicked off the Activation Wizard because the date was outside of the parameters that it recognizes. In particular some users may try to extend the life of the Beta/RC by changing their system dates - so the date screening is necessary.- John

I had the exact same problem. I had to resolve it using the phone-activation process, which is very long, very tedious and constantly interrupted by the pop-up warning that I may be the victim of software counterfeiting - it takes focus, so the keypresses are very often not "hitting" the right boxes on the activation menu. It feels like something designed by Monty Python, IMHO. [Later edit:] The time was off by 7 years on my test PC. This may have caused extra trouble.

I met the same problem for only a minute, but I solved it by activating windows again without changing the key

Right I tried again but this time I waited a few seconds to see what would appear and this time I got a few more options. So i've run the Windows Activation, I get an error,A problem occurred when Windows tried to activate. Error Code 0x80072F8F"A security Error Occured"Which is quite helpful of Windows. Anyways, I googled the error code, and found the following KB articlehttp://support.microsoft.com/kb/929458So then I noticed that the date was 2007! eh?? fixed the date, and tried activation again, this time it worked.Now why on earth is the local date/time effecting activation? Is this for people without any internet access? Possibly a little too restrictive imo and surely it would run better if it detected net access, then used an NTP server if available, otherwise fallback to local time. Anyways...Thanks a million, it's all working again now.Nick. It used to be that having Windows go to the internet to check time would only work if you already knew the time. Here's a quote (I was looking for a knowledgebase, but this works) Here's a tip for you. If the time change is too big, the time sync will fail. For example, if the DATE is off, the clock will not change. To test this, open a command prompt as an administrator and enter "w32tm /resync" and see what error you get. This gives you specific errors, not the silly "something broke" errors from the GUI. On my system as soon as I adjusted the date, then the clock would sync. Before that it wouldn't work no matter what ports were open, etc. Anyone else think having windows tell someone their installation is not genuine because ofthe unfixable (by windows) clock or some other reason, is offensive and unprofessional?Illogical?Anyone?ok it must be me. Thanks a million anyway.

I just installed Windows 7 on my Dell Opitplex 760 and the clock is going nuts. I set it and within 30 minutes later is off again. The computer is only about 2 mos old and ran fine in Vista. Time is also correct in bios. Any ideas? When I tried the w32tm /resync above I got an access denied error. Thanks in advance. Robbie